Everyone Else is Invisible

by Ala Y

To start a story by introducing your character with something like "I am Bob. I am fifteen. I'm pretty cool." That is shitty. On the other hand, starting with intense unexplained violence is stupid. Your characters need a balanced introduction. In the case of She is Not Invisible, the author takes us into Laureth Peak's world by having her vocalize her anxieties, filling us in on her predicament. Marcus Sedgwick uses a past tense "here's what happened" kind of tone, which usually annoys me as a reader, but it fit the narrating character so I actually liked hearing Laureth's voice in my head as if she was telling me the story in person.

Sedgwick definitely did his research to get this story right. He says he spent months in a blind boarding school to perfectly form Laureth's personality and habits, and as far as I could tell he never let eyesight slip into her narrations. She's not only blind, she's also a writer's daughter which reflects a ton on her perspective of the world. Most of the story, she talks about her crazy dad, her semi-neglectful mom, and her prodigal brother Benjamin.

Cretain parts of the plot are repetitive, and the coincidences are extensive, but given the topic of the story--her dad's disappearance due to his obsession with a book on coincidence--it also seemed fit. Throughout the book there are times you wish Laureth would shut up and tell you what's happening, but maybe she just didn't know what to filter when she shared her thoughts with us.

Overall, the book was a good read, I finished significantly quicker than any other book I've read recently. The mystery-drama hybrid definitely is worth the few hours it takes to read it.